13 Spooky Fonts for Scare-Raising Halloween Pics

Ooooonce upon a time, there was an intrepid photo-embetterer who loved Halloween. They opened their favorite photo editing tool only to find … NO SPOOKY FONTS! MOOHAHAHAHA!!!

Whew! That one gets us every time. Fortunately, it’s only fiction: here in the real world, PicMonkey’s got more than enough spooky fonts to keep you creeping and crawling all month long. Here’s a guide to our scariest, sweetest, trick-or-treatiest horror fonts. Take a look, find your favs, then head to the Editor to add them to your photos and seasonal designs.

How to add text to your Halloween photos and designs:

Here’s the lowdown on how to add our spooky fonts to a photo, wicked fast:

Choose your photo’s location from the storage options that appear in a grey bar, then click your photo to open it in the Editor.

Head to the Text tab (Tt icon) and click the scary font your want to use, then click Add text at the top of the tab.

Type your words in the text box that appears on top of your image.

Use the Text palette to change your font color, adjust the size, and add text effects like drop shadow or curved text.

If you want to start with a blank canvas or template, you can do that, too! Instead of hovering over Edit, start by hovering over Design. Then choose either a blank canvas or one of our designer-crafted templates.

Wanna take our spooky fonts for a test drive right now? Click our Midnight Dance Party template (above) to open it in the Editor, and change up the text while you read about some of our favorite Halloween fonts below. That way, you can see how each of them looks IRL.

Monster fonts

Mood: “Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”

The Deets: What’s Halloween without a good monster? These creature feature fonts have you covered—though it may be best not to ask what in. Add them to Halloween party invitations, posters, you name it; unlike movie monsters, our fonts play well with others.

Design Tip: How much ooze is your jam? If you’re in more of a “low-key droplets” frame of mind, Dracula’s your man. If you’re like, “Naw, please gimme as much dripping slime as supernaturally possible,” then roll on up to Exquisite Corpse! If neither rings your bell, explore our full range of spooky fonts: there’s more gore where these guys came from.

Gothic text

Mood: Composing a treatise on why you believe your neighbor is a warlock.

The Deets: Not just for beginning evil and advanced evil, these fonts are medieval. Hahaha! Haha! Heh …

Okay.

At any rate, De Walpergen Pica and Blackletter are heavy hitters from way back when, guaranteed to add some gothic gravitas to your Halloween projects.

Design Tip: Try using the seriousness of these weighty fonts to create hilarious contrasts. For instance, “Get in, loser, we’re trick-or-treating,” may ring a little “Mean Girls,” but it instantly gains a sublime silliness when you type it in Blackletter. Fonts! They’re magic.

Horror fonts

Mood: In our opinion, Nightbird and Face Your Fears give kind of a “lipstick scrawled on the bathroom mirror” vibe. Times New Yorker is better for addressing cryptic riddles to plucky detectives.

The Deets: These horror fonts remind us of a drive-in slasher flick double feature! Their grunge-y style makes them natural headliners, perfect for announcing a fun Halloween event like a movie-watching party or a school fundraiser.

Design Tip: If we had to rank these fonts from one to 10, one being “yawn” and 10 being “never sleep again,” we’d give Times New Yorker a solid four. It’s a little spooky, a little spattery, but mostly pretty subtle. Nightbird and Face Your Fears, on the other hand, are both easy eights. Spend some time thinking about which tone better suits your Halloween projects—freaky-but-friendly, or all-out frightfest?

Scripty text

Mood: “More Pixy Stix!”

The Deets: These fonts are as sugary-sweet as a bucket of Halloween candy. Less about jump scares, more about the fun of becoming something or someone else, they’re ideal for folks who don’t want to be scary on Halloween. Use them to adorn Halloween night photos of costumed royalty, ballerinas, or merpeople; put them at the center of bewitching party invitations; or just run around outside in some fairy wings and sparkly face paint. ‘Tis the season.

Design Tip: These dainty scripts are pretty-pretty, but if you have important information to include in your design, make sure to pair them with an unadorned and readable font—one in the sans serif family, for instance.

Another Design Tip: How to tell if a font is sans serif? Check for the flourish! Serif refers to the small line attached to the end of a letter stroke. No flourish? Then it’s sans (French for without) serif.

Sci-fi fonts

The Deets: These fonts evoke crawly caterpillars, alien tentacles, and shuddery bowls full of spaghetti brains. (Are those a real thing?) More weird and wacky than they are horrifying, they’re well-suited to Halloween graphics for all ages.

Design Tip: Seriously, clear the room before you try instant matter transport. This isn’t a design tip, but it’s a very good tip for life in general.